SPCR

Hello,

Hitachi and NEC have come up with a liquid cooling system to reduce heat spreading as well as noise. A typical drive would be 10 db quieter dropping below the human hearing limit.

I must say that sounds like music in my ears. My HDD is currently my loudest component even when enclosed.

Unfortunately I haven't seen any pictures of the system yet.

Regards
Phoeniks

You can read more at http://www.hitachi.com/New/cnews/070730.html

here is a pic:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... rives.html

this is exciting news!

this is exciting news!

it's overkill in my opinion. an undervolted 80mm fan can keep the temps acceptable of almost any HDD with no noise penalty, and the latest hard drives from Samsung and WD are so quiet you would need to have a fanless PC for the HD to be main source of noise.

A typical drive would be 10 db quieter dropping below the human hearing limit.

let's say average SPL of 3.5" HDD is 29dBA, 10dB less is 19dBA, this is definitely not below the human threshold of hearing (0dBA).

jaganath wrote:the latest hard drives from Samsung and WD are so quiet you would need to have a fanless PC for the HD to be main source of noise.

Not true! I have the WD 500GB hard drive and while it is much quieter than some of the other hard drives, it is the main source of noise in my computer. I'm using the Scythe Ninja w/Noctua at 600RPM. But even if I turned it up to 1000RPM, the WD hard drive is still the main source of noise. I have the hard drive vibration suspended too. Hard drives have always been the loudest part of my computer.

Interesting - thanks for this. I'm going to be cautious because the term "quiet" is subjective. Hopefully this product is quiet by SPCR standards.

I've avoided watercooled HD systems (and there are some) so far because the focus is on reducing temps and I don't care about reducing temps, I want to reduce noise. If the HD is a bit hot, well, too bad as long as it's not dangerously hot.


But I'm not sure how a watercooled system will be quieter than an enclosure system. They say they reduce noise by "wrap(ping) the entire HDD in high performance noise absorbing material and vibration insulation". That's what an enclosure does.

Still, it looks interesting and maybe it does work better than enclosures. Looking forward to more info.

So basically it's a fancy watercooled enclosure. While it may be top of the line solution at silencing hard drives while keeping them cool, IMO it's a definite overkill. Scythe quiet drive does a good job at quieting the drive while keeping temperatures at a reasonable level.

When / where can I buy?!

Now, there's VERY GOOD REASON to water-cool your HDDs. Normally if you wrap your HDDs in excessive amounts of acoustic absorbation materials it catches on fire and dies. If you water-cool it while doing the same, the water extinguishes the fire. Happy times!

Hence the HDD box!

Not to mention you can use a few of the latest high-performance dirves in different RAID modes within the same noise envelope. So essentially you can get even faster AND even quieter than compared to air.

My Scythe Quiet Drive is excellent regarding idle noise, and temps. However, it's also excellent as an amplifier of seeks...